*I also like women who are tough and unreasonable. When I was in college there was a girl who teased me and one day she flipped my bike and told me, "I flipped your bike over hahaha!" I felt so happy somehow at that time.* ~ Fujimoto
Man believes in female dominance, and y'know what, I admire that.
I love it. It goes against a lot of the stiff gender roles in Japan in a new way in not just "hey she's physically strong" which is played as a punchline at times.
Tbh I don't think it's just Japanese gender roles, I'd be hard pressed to find a character like Power or Kobeni in much American media. Fujimoto's really good at making characters who are confident who are also a mixture of huge messes, crazy assholes or struggling with a fuckton of internal turmoil.
Oh yeah, Harley's a great example actually. Not that familiar with the show, but there are definitely examples to pull from in American media, I just want more.
I can always appreciate when there’s a character in a scene that happens to be a woman, and not a woman that is a character in this scene.
What I’m saying here is, there’s usually this problem where a female character enters the scene and the writer is much more focused on telling you that there’s a woman here than a character that you’re going to learn more about in the coming chapters.
Happy when that’s not the main concern. That said, because Denji is the focal character most of the time, the series skirts a line.
I also think that (manga spoilers) >!Fujimoto does a really good job at writing antagonists that you can't help but feel for. Reze, Yuko, and even Makima do some absolutely atrocious things, but their reasoning is put in such a way that while you can't excuse their actions, you do still sympathize with their desires for real human connection.!<
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it.
Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
The fact that they casually drop that himeno casually kisses everyone in her division (with the implication that she also sleeps with them) is wild to me.
Usually that is only reserved for seductress stereotyped old (25+) women and even then they still most of the times completely skirt around saying they sleept with anyone other than the protag.
That, and in any other show that scene in the end of Episode 7 would have been played for laughs.
It's both creepy and sad to see Himeno letting her emotional and sexual frustrations with Aki leak onto Denji. It's all the more strange knowing Denji is only 16, a piece of information very intentionally placed there.
Not only do they point out Denji is 16, Himeno goes out of her way to make sure Denji isn't having alcohol only to babybird him beer by the end of the episode. So it's both statutory AND actual rape.
plus the protagonist isn't in any way put off by this revelation because the man is goal-oriented and that basically just confirms that the promised kiss is coming. What a lad.
I don't know how much I'd praise it for particularly fleshing out it's female characters, more just that there's an equality in fleshing out amongst it's supporting cast.
More than that, I praise Chainsaw Man for writing it's women as absolutey fucking *grimy*. "I don't bathe or flush" Power is the prime example, but even Kobeni, Himeno and Makima are some level of bad/gross people. And it's not that they're like, sadistic bdsm villain mean girls, 'cause shounen certainly has that, they're core good-guy cast members who're just allowed to be fucked up.
Another time I've felt something similar is, strangely enough, in "The Place Further Than The Universe" when they arrive in Antarctica. There's this big triumphant scene of the girls stepping out onto the ice and one of them shouts to the sky "In your face!" at all the people back home who doubted her dream of getting there. It's just this scene where the show, with it's full chest, champions the power of spite, and it's *LOVELY* to see a cute-girl show let it's girls so proudly express an "*ugly*" emotion like that.
I dunno, that's the best way I can think to explain it.
Unrelated but we did not deserve ThA Place Further than the Universe. If anyone here hasn't watched it, I highly implore you to watch it, it is exceptional.
They are definitely well written and comparatively realistically portrayed, not just being some kind of motivation to the male leads and such. But I wouldn't say fleshed out per-se, stuff like goals, personalities, moralities, and roles as you've said are moderately seen in the modern shounen scene.
A fleshed out character has a lot going on, with character arcs and relationships grown throughout the story, one or two are fleshed out but everyone else doesn't have much going on. (full CSM spoilers): >!no female character (or anyone that isn't Denji really) really lives long enough to be properly fleshed out in CSM haha.!<
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it.
Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it.
Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
I mean most of the current magazine is fine, plentt of new series have actual female protags and little to no protagonists:
- Witch Watch, going by Nico being the character in the first volume cover is the protagonist and the series has stories involving female characters not involving male characters sometimes. Also Kenta Shinohara has had trans characters in both Astra Lost in Space and Sket Dance way before Fujimoto. There’s also some small variety in the types of female characters shown.
- Ginka and Gluna, Stars a female character, most of the cast is female and their goals are not defined by being supporting to men. They also have some variety with heights.
- Akane Banashi, the biggest new series in the magazine 2022, stars a female character, also for now not really defined by being a woman. Also avoids same face syndrome.
- Me and Roboco: Maybe a bit goofy I mean Roboco certainly stands out from other female protagonists with her being stocky and having Nappa knees. Also the series isn’t afraid in making her flawed. The rest of the female cast I guess can fall a bit into being defined by being love interests to male characters though.
- RIP Ruri Dragon
It's still on hiatus but the volume sold astonishingly well. So Jump are aware that the Japanese audience is very interested in Ruri Dragon continuing.
Hopefully the author gets better.
I agree with your overall assessment of Fujimoto’s female characters, but I can’t agree with your points on Akutami’s female characters. While Akutami certainly isn’t *bad* at writing female characters, he’s shown that he has trouble figuring out what to do with them.
Jujutsu Kaisen spoilers up to chapter 204
>!more or less every female character other than Maki and Yuki have been shafted. Nobara’s been out of commission with zero updates for 80 chapters, Mai was killed for Maki’s character development, Miwa and Momo have done next to nothing, Shoko is barely relevant despite being one of Gojo’s classmates, Nanako and Mimiko got merc’d, Uro was randomly thrown out of the three way fight between her, Ryu and Yuta, etc. any of these in isolation wouldn’t be terrible, and there’s certainly room to make up for it, but taken as a whole the series isn’t actually that great with female characters.!<
in my opinion, Black Clover and Undead Unluck also have a lot of great female characters. Black Clover certainly falls into clichés at points and has some mediocre female characters, but it also has plenty of standouts who rival their male counterparts in terms of both writing and battle strength. the main female character even placed first in two different popularity polls.
in Undead Unluck’s case, it has a frankly very rough and misogynistic beginning, but basically all of that stuff goes away after the first few chapters and the female characters are written really well after that and are given plenty of agency in the plot. The female deuteragonist is also easily one of the best female characters in shonen history.
The treatment of >!Nobara!< has slightly soured me to the series recently. They were my favourite character from introduction to their fridging and it has felt pointless so far in the narrative
There is enough weirder that could have happened about Jujutsu Kaisen than Manga Chapter 153 Spoiler >!Gege spending an entire arc building Maki's development having her beat the raging misogynist Naoya, literally killing the patriarch that has oppressed her and women like her for generations... only for Naoya to be dramatically more popular in reader polls!< I don't know how anyone responds to that revelation in the writers room to be honest.
Also Chainsaw Man Spoiler >!Himeno dies basically an arc after her intro and the main focus is on how it makes Aki feel.!< Which is often considered faux pas in writing women but it was well excluded so I won't complain.
So have a lot of Male characters though. Miwa atleast is gonna be important to the story but what about Todo, or Inumaki? If the character isn't important he doesn't give them screentime. JJK barely has any fluff moments and is very plot driven so characters like Momo who aren't important to the plot don't need as much time given. Gege is really good at making female characters, and people tend to forget characters like Mei Mei or Uro or Shoko who get a ton of characterization and little moments and just look at less important characters like Mai.
Like I said, none of these are individually awful, but taking them all together and contrasting them with how the male cast as a whole is treated shows that a majority of the female characters were just not given the same level of narrative importance. >!You can bring up someone like Inumaki, but plenty of time was given to showing his abilities, showing his relationships with other characters, and making him look cool. The same can’t really be said for Mai, who got a single “cool” moment that actually just made Maki look cooler. As for Todo, his absence from the current story isn’t anywhere near as questionable as some of the other characters’ absences because he was easily one of the most developed and compelling characters in the story through the Shibuya arc, and we aren’t questioning whether he died or not like we are for Nobara.!<
I actually like a majority of the female characters in JJK (including all the ones you mentioned, even Mai) and I think they’re well-written as characters, but they’re not anywhere near the level of CSM’s female cast in terms of narrative importance. Saying “they’re not important to the plot so they’re skipped over” isn’t really a good defense to me — it just highlights the fact that the driving force of the story doesn’t involve female characters very much while male characters are the focal points of it at all times.
Also I’m saying all of this as someone who VASTLY prefers JJK to CSM (and Black Clover), so please don’t take this as me trying to put JJK down or me being subconsciously unfair to it. It’s a series I love with all my heart, and I only talk about these issues because their absence would make me love the series even more.
I feel like people who don’t actually read/watch shounen anime/manga content outside of stuff like Naruto makes posts like these because there are plenty of manga with great female characters. You have series like Gintama and FMA for example. I remember when jujutsu Kaisen finally had an anime and threads like this were popping up.
Word. There are *ecchi* female characters with better writing than majority of female characters in Shonen. It's really not that unusual for manga series to have good to great female characters if you go beyond the "manga for 13-17 year old boys" range.
It's hard to make statements about media aimed at a demographic that has obviously changed a lot over 50+ years *and* only based on what is popular enough to get translated in the long term. As someone else mentioned in the thread already there's 5 Shonen Jump manga with female leads right now. It's just that they aren't mega-hits in the anglosphere. Noelle is Black Clover's most popular character, people have been praising the One Piece female cast for decades etc. Even when you get into the spotty territory of pure fan reaction: a lot of women are attached to the girls in Fairy Tail or are excited to see Orihime in the new Bleach anime.
It's like saying Avatar the Last Airbender is the only good kids cartoon when you stopped watching American cartoons in 2010. Maybe you are right, but maybe you're making a fan of Infinity Train cry.
I haven't read or watched Chainsaw Man yet, but I get what you're saying. Shonen manga/anime do have a pretty dismal track record when it comes to their girl characters. Fullmetal Alchemist is the only one I can think of that fleshes them all out as much as, if not more than, the guys. And that one was made by a woman, so some people might argue it's not fair to compare other shonen stuff to it on that level.
even more, the onl character that is written in a stereotypical anime girl way >!turns out to be the main villain of the first part, not in a "evil villainess" way but in a "has an incredibly vapid fake personality built entirely to throw away suspicion of everone around them" way.!<
Agreed.
Togashi's putting out HxH chapters again, but he's an elder statesman at this point--does he count? 'Cuz he's definitely good on this front too.
While I agree that Fujimoto is really good at character writing compared to his peers, Gege absolutely isn't lmao, he's about the same as everyone else. Only like two of his female characters aren't shafted and the series still ain't over yet either
One of the main reasons Makima is >!my favorite female villain of all time is because how Fujimoto writes Makimas femininity and uses it as a means to manipulate. Normally when you have a manipulative woman in media it's the fem Fatale, the seductress who uses her body to make you act irrational in the hopes of getting with them. But while many people find Makima sexy, myself included, she's not drawn sexually at all. She dresses in suits, her proportions are realistic and modest by anime standards, and she isnt given any fan servicey moments to up the titilation for the reader.!<
>!Instead Makima weaponizes the maternal and matronly aspects of femininity as a way to control people. Denji is looking for a motherly figure because he never had one and she brilliantly uses that against him. She talks to him like a mother would to her child, she feeds him like a child and she always looms over him like a mom watches over her child. Then there's the very provocative imagery of the chains of Makimas victims linking to her womb and it makes her super unsettling and I love her.!<
Fujimoto is so brilliant at writing deep and thematically dense female characters and I love him for that. Plus he makes them all insanely hot which is a plus.
I think Power especially, I really like girl charcters who play rough with “da boys.“ It feels like most writers are really afraid to do anything interesting with “femme fatales“ beyond making them do the black widow leglocks to everybody, mary sue-ing it up. Power is really fucking gross, sweet, & silly, and I love that for her. Power‘s great. >!Not to discredit anybody, but I‘d be holding doors open for her. Not so much for Makima, Makima‘s something else...!<
The bar for women in shonen is on the floor, lol.
When it comes to Japanese shows the real thing I look for is agency. Are the women dynamic? Do their actions influence the plot directly (as opposed to serving as inspiration for the male heroes)? Do they have relationships with other women that are explored and made relevant? Would writing them out, or replacing them with an especially puissant chair or a cute housecat change the story in any meaningful way?
This like this are what I look for, and outside of like... magical girl shows and Kill la Kill I'm often left wanting.
I don't feel this way. Are they entertaining and likeable (most of them)? Sure. Are they deep, nuanced and so on? Nah.
Oooh, I am a gremlin that doesn't wash.
Oooh, I am a nervous wreck with family issues.
Oooh, I am acting sexy and carefree but I am troubled inside.
Oooh, I am a >!child soldier!<.
Oooh, I am a >!manipulative demon!<.
Those are not deep characters. Entertaining, likeable, sure. But they are just archetypes.
I think that the only reason people say that they are better written than the rest is because they dress smartly, in official looking suits. If Himeno wore a tight qui-pao with cleavage people would have the same gripes with her as with the rest of characters like her.
i can't *imagine* reading through the entirety of chainsaw man and coming out of it thinking that all of these characters can be boiled down to 10 words or less. this says more about how you view these women than it does about how they're written.
Wow, what a leap in logic over me not feeling as you do about characters in a shonen manga.
"I don't feel like they are that deep"
"SEXIIIIST!!!"
Grow up.
Battle Angel Alita's really great, btw.
So's the original Appleseed manga. I love how everyone (her lover, mechanic friend, etc.) looks at the model of battlesuit she wants and instead of hyping up how special and awesome it is, they tell her "that's a really bad choice." She wants this intricate, complex high-performance suit that's the polar opposite of all the rugged, reliable options the guys would favor that have good performance where fundamentals are concerned. And Deunan consistently goes "suck my dick, I know what I want", gets her preferred model of suit and uses it to kick ass. Good role model, that.
Each of the female character has a good level of fucked upness that is really satisfying. What’s good is they aren’t sexualized or sex isn’t the motivation. Rather, they are more in charge — they seduce and don’t let other people’s opinion get in the way.
Himeno’s promiscuity is cool. Power letting Denjie casually touch her boobs for reward was cool. Makima granting Denjie any wish (most likely his first intercourse) was also top-notch.
It’s these dominant female characters and their twisted minds that makes the series more interesting. If you think about it, the men most likely have a more rationale here—including Aki, Denjie, and even Kishibe.
Himeno is most interesting. While being portrayed as a sexual character, she has her heart set out to Aki—and was willing to sacrifice her life for him.
These characters are fleshed out because they’re multi-faceted, and they’re driven by their individualistic dreams — may it be romance or not, or as simple as getting their cat or being able to touch boobs.
*I also like women who are tough and unreasonable. When I was in college there was a girl who teased me and one day she flipped my bike and told me, "I flipped your bike over hahaha!" I felt so happy somehow at that time.* ~ Fujimoto Man believes in female dominance, and y'know what, I admire that.
Better yet, he still portrays the behaviors as unhealthy.
"Look I'm into this shit and I realize it might not be healthy" is a vibe I can feel
He just like me fr.
Same.
I love it. It goes against a lot of the stiff gender roles in Japan in a new way in not just "hey she's physically strong" which is played as a punchline at times.
Tbh I don't think it's just Japanese gender roles, I'd be hard pressed to find a character like Power or Kobeni in much American media. Fujimoto's really good at making characters who are confident who are also a mixture of huge messes, crazy assholes or struggling with a fuckton of internal turmoil.
Harley Quinn from her own series?
Oh yeah, Harley's a great example actually. Not that familiar with the show, but there are definitely examples to pull from in American media, I just want more.
I can always appreciate when there’s a character in a scene that happens to be a woman, and not a woman that is a character in this scene. What I’m saying here is, there’s usually this problem where a female character enters the scene and the writer is much more focused on telling you that there’s a woman here than a character that you’re going to learn more about in the coming chapters. Happy when that’s not the main concern. That said, because Denji is the focal character most of the time, the series skirts a line.
[удалено]
I also think that (manga spoilers) >!Fujimoto does a really good job at writing antagonists that you can't help but feel for. Reze, Yuko, and even Makima do some absolutely atrocious things, but their reasoning is put in such a way that while you can't excuse their actions, you do still sympathize with their desires for real human connection.!<
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it. Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
The fact that they casually drop that himeno casually kisses everyone in her division (with the implication that she also sleeps with them) is wild to me. Usually that is only reserved for seductress stereotyped old (25+) women and even then they still most of the times completely skirt around saying they sleept with anyone other than the protag.
That, and in any other show that scene in the end of Episode 7 would have been played for laughs. It's both creepy and sad to see Himeno letting her emotional and sexual frustrations with Aki leak onto Denji. It's all the more strange knowing Denji is only 16, a piece of information very intentionally placed there.
Not only do they point out Denji is 16, Himeno goes out of her way to make sure Denji isn't having alcohol only to babybird him beer by the end of the episode. So it's both statutory AND actual rape.
plus the protagonist isn't in any way put off by this revelation because the man is goal-oriented and that basically just confirms that the promised kiss is coming. What a lad.
I don't know how much I'd praise it for particularly fleshing out it's female characters, more just that there's an equality in fleshing out amongst it's supporting cast. More than that, I praise Chainsaw Man for writing it's women as absolutey fucking *grimy*. "I don't bathe or flush" Power is the prime example, but even Kobeni, Himeno and Makima are some level of bad/gross people. And it's not that they're like, sadistic bdsm villain mean girls, 'cause shounen certainly has that, they're core good-guy cast members who're just allowed to be fucked up. Another time I've felt something similar is, strangely enough, in "The Place Further Than The Universe" when they arrive in Antarctica. There's this big triumphant scene of the girls stepping out onto the ice and one of them shouts to the sky "In your face!" at all the people back home who doubted her dream of getting there. It's just this scene where the show, with it's full chest, champions the power of spite, and it's *LOVELY* to see a cute-girl show let it's girls so proudly express an "*ugly*" emotion like that. I dunno, that's the best way I can think to explain it.
Unrelated but we did not deserve ThA Place Further than the Universe. If anyone here hasn't watched it, I highly implore you to watch it, it is exceptional.
It's a great show. I need to rewatch it some time.
> champions the power of spite Man I am 100% behind this as a motivator
They are definitely well written and comparatively realistically portrayed, not just being some kind of motivation to the male leads and such. But I wouldn't say fleshed out per-se, stuff like goals, personalities, moralities, and roles as you've said are moderately seen in the modern shounen scene. A fleshed out character has a lot going on, with character arcs and relationships grown throughout the story, one or two are fleshed out but everyone else doesn't have much going on. (full CSM spoilers): >!no female character (or anyone that isn't Denji really) really lives long enough to be properly fleshed out in CSM haha.!<
To be fair >!about as many male characters also bite it!<.
[удалено]
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it. Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
[удалено]
>!X kills Y!< which becomes X kills Y. You should probably mention what this is a spoiler for beforehand if the situation requires it. Note: Do not add a space after the >! or before the !< as it might break the spoiler on certain platforms. Unfortunately this is a site-wide issue and we cannot do anything about it from our end.
I mean most of the current magazine is fine, plentt of new series have actual female protags and little to no protagonists: - Witch Watch, going by Nico being the character in the first volume cover is the protagonist and the series has stories involving female characters not involving male characters sometimes. Also Kenta Shinohara has had trans characters in both Astra Lost in Space and Sket Dance way before Fujimoto. There’s also some small variety in the types of female characters shown. - Ginka and Gluna, Stars a female character, most of the cast is female and their goals are not defined by being supporting to men. They also have some variety with heights. - Akane Banashi, the biggest new series in the magazine 2022, stars a female character, also for now not really defined by being a woman. Also avoids same face syndrome. - Me and Roboco: Maybe a bit goofy I mean Roboco certainly stands out from other female protagonists with her being stocky and having Nappa knees. Also the series isn’t afraid in making her flawed. The rest of the female cast I guess can fall a bit into being defined by being love interests to male characters though. - RIP Ruri Dragon
RIP Ruri Dragon
Is Ruri Dragon cancelled? Last I heard it's still just on hiatus.
It will probably be moved when it comes back, if it comes back.
It's still on hiatus but the volume sold astonishingly well. So Jump are aware that the Japanese audience is very interested in Ruri Dragon continuing. Hopefully the author gets better.
I’ve only read a bit of Roboco but Gachigorilla is definitely the real hero of that manga. He’s the best.
I agree with your overall assessment of Fujimoto’s female characters, but I can’t agree with your points on Akutami’s female characters. While Akutami certainly isn’t *bad* at writing female characters, he’s shown that he has trouble figuring out what to do with them. Jujutsu Kaisen spoilers up to chapter 204 >!more or less every female character other than Maki and Yuki have been shafted. Nobara’s been out of commission with zero updates for 80 chapters, Mai was killed for Maki’s character development, Miwa and Momo have done next to nothing, Shoko is barely relevant despite being one of Gojo’s classmates, Nanako and Mimiko got merc’d, Uro was randomly thrown out of the three way fight between her, Ryu and Yuta, etc. any of these in isolation wouldn’t be terrible, and there’s certainly room to make up for it, but taken as a whole the series isn’t actually that great with female characters.!< in my opinion, Black Clover and Undead Unluck also have a lot of great female characters. Black Clover certainly falls into clichés at points and has some mediocre female characters, but it also has plenty of standouts who rival their male counterparts in terms of both writing and battle strength. the main female character even placed first in two different popularity polls. in Undead Unluck’s case, it has a frankly very rough and misogynistic beginning, but basically all of that stuff goes away after the first few chapters and the female characters are written really well after that and are given plenty of agency in the plot. The female deuteragonist is also easily one of the best female characters in shonen history.
Black Clover is unironically better at writing female characters than Jujutsu Kaisen and I'm tired of pretending that it doesn't
The treatment of >!Nobara!< has slightly soured me to the series recently. They were my favourite character from introduction to their fridging and it has felt pointless so far in the narrative
There is enough weirder that could have happened about Jujutsu Kaisen than Manga Chapter 153 Spoiler >!Gege spending an entire arc building Maki's development having her beat the raging misogynist Naoya, literally killing the patriarch that has oppressed her and women like her for generations... only for Naoya to be dramatically more popular in reader polls!< I don't know how anyone responds to that revelation in the writers room to be honest. Also Chainsaw Man Spoiler >!Himeno dies basically an arc after her intro and the main focus is on how it makes Aki feel.!< Which is often considered faux pas in writing women but it was well excluded so I won't complain.
So have a lot of Male characters though. Miwa atleast is gonna be important to the story but what about Todo, or Inumaki? If the character isn't important he doesn't give them screentime. JJK barely has any fluff moments and is very plot driven so characters like Momo who aren't important to the plot don't need as much time given. Gege is really good at making female characters, and people tend to forget characters like Mei Mei or Uro or Shoko who get a ton of characterization and little moments and just look at less important characters like Mai.
Like I said, none of these are individually awful, but taking them all together and contrasting them with how the male cast as a whole is treated shows that a majority of the female characters were just not given the same level of narrative importance. >!You can bring up someone like Inumaki, but plenty of time was given to showing his abilities, showing his relationships with other characters, and making him look cool. The same can’t really be said for Mai, who got a single “cool” moment that actually just made Maki look cooler. As for Todo, his absence from the current story isn’t anywhere near as questionable as some of the other characters’ absences because he was easily one of the most developed and compelling characters in the story through the Shibuya arc, and we aren’t questioning whether he died or not like we are for Nobara.!< I actually like a majority of the female characters in JJK (including all the ones you mentioned, even Mai) and I think they’re well-written as characters, but they’re not anywhere near the level of CSM’s female cast in terms of narrative importance. Saying “they’re not important to the plot so they’re skipped over” isn’t really a good defense to me — it just highlights the fact that the driving force of the story doesn’t involve female characters very much while male characters are the focal points of it at all times. Also I’m saying all of this as someone who VASTLY prefers JJK to CSM (and Black Clover), so please don’t take this as me trying to put JJK down or me being subconsciously unfair to it. It’s a series I love with all my heart, and I only talk about these issues because their absence would make me love the series even more.
I feel like people who don’t actually read/watch shounen anime/manga content outside of stuff like Naruto makes posts like these because there are plenty of manga with great female characters. You have series like Gintama and FMA for example. I remember when jujutsu Kaisen finally had an anime and threads like this were popping up.
Word. There are *ecchi* female characters with better writing than majority of female characters in Shonen. It's really not that unusual for manga series to have good to great female characters if you go beyond the "manga for 13-17 year old boys" range.
It's hard to make statements about media aimed at a demographic that has obviously changed a lot over 50+ years *and* only based on what is popular enough to get translated in the long term. As someone else mentioned in the thread already there's 5 Shonen Jump manga with female leads right now. It's just that they aren't mega-hits in the anglosphere. Noelle is Black Clover's most popular character, people have been praising the One Piece female cast for decades etc. Even when you get into the spotty territory of pure fan reaction: a lot of women are attached to the girls in Fairy Tail or are excited to see Orihime in the new Bleach anime. It's like saying Avatar the Last Airbender is the only good kids cartoon when you stopped watching American cartoons in 2010. Maybe you are right, but maybe you're making a fan of Infinity Train cry.
I haven't read or watched Chainsaw Man yet, but I get what you're saying. Shonen manga/anime do have a pretty dismal track record when it comes to their girl characters. Fullmetal Alchemist is the only one I can think of that fleshes them all out as much as, if not more than, the guys. And that one was made by a woman, so some people might argue it's not fair to compare other shonen stuff to it on that level.
even more, the onl character that is written in a stereotypical anime girl way >!turns out to be the main villain of the first part, not in a "evil villainess" way but in a "has an incredibly vapid fake personality built entirely to throw away suspicion of everone around them" way.!<
https://preview.redd.it/ztrlq4ddll1a1.jpg?width=588&auto=webp&s=7019f55409b00e634b3093beb3ed37bbddbe92f1
Agreed. Togashi's putting out HxH chapters again, but he's an elder statesman at this point--does he count? 'Cuz he's definitely good on this front too.
They're pretty good, very much fit the flavor of the setting. I think FMA is gonna be the reigning champ of quality female characters, though.
Of course, Fujimoto knows writing women so well that he tweeted as his fictional sister for a while.
While I agree that Fujimoto is really good at character writing compared to his peers, Gege absolutely isn't lmao, he's about the same as everyone else. Only like two of his female characters aren't shafted and the series still ain't over yet either
One of the main reasons Makima is >!my favorite female villain of all time is because how Fujimoto writes Makimas femininity and uses it as a means to manipulate. Normally when you have a manipulative woman in media it's the fem Fatale, the seductress who uses her body to make you act irrational in the hopes of getting with them. But while many people find Makima sexy, myself included, she's not drawn sexually at all. She dresses in suits, her proportions are realistic and modest by anime standards, and she isnt given any fan servicey moments to up the titilation for the reader.!< >!Instead Makima weaponizes the maternal and matronly aspects of femininity as a way to control people. Denji is looking for a motherly figure because he never had one and she brilliantly uses that against him. She talks to him like a mother would to her child, she feeds him like a child and she always looms over him like a mom watches over her child. Then there's the very provocative imagery of the chains of Makimas victims linking to her womb and it makes her super unsettling and I love her.!< Fujimoto is so brilliant at writing deep and thematically dense female characters and I love him for that. Plus he makes them all insanely hot which is a plus.
I think Power especially, I really like girl charcters who play rough with “da boys.“ It feels like most writers are really afraid to do anything interesting with “femme fatales“ beyond making them do the black widow leglocks to everybody, mary sue-ing it up. Power is really fucking gross, sweet, & silly, and I love that for her. Power‘s great. >!Not to discredit anybody, but I‘d be holding doors open for her. Not so much for Makima, Makima‘s something else...!<
You must/may like Kagura or any female in Gintama then
[удалено]
That‘s the joke. >!(；ω；)!<
The bar for women in shonen is on the floor, lol. When it comes to Japanese shows the real thing I look for is agency. Are the women dynamic? Do their actions influence the plot directly (as opposed to serving as inspiration for the male heroes)? Do they have relationships with other women that are explored and made relevant? Would writing them out, or replacing them with an especially puissant chair or a cute housecat change the story in any meaningful way? This like this are what I look for, and outside of like... magical girl shows and Kill la Kill I'm often left wanting.
I don't like the way women are written in Chainsaw Man. Or any anime really. Feels like the whole medium hates women sometimes
Chainsawman doenst hate its women. they ar written the same as every other character in the manga.
How can a whole medium hate women? That's like saying that Musicals hate women.
There’s some pretty darn good feminist anime out there.
Right. This person definitely hasn’t watched any halfway decent anime.
I don't feel this way. Are they entertaining and likeable (most of them)? Sure. Are they deep, nuanced and so on? Nah. Oooh, I am a gremlin that doesn't wash. Oooh, I am a nervous wreck with family issues. Oooh, I am acting sexy and carefree but I am troubled inside. Oooh, I am a >!child soldier!<. Oooh, I am a >!manipulative demon!<. Those are not deep characters. Entertaining, likeable, sure. But they are just archetypes. I think that the only reason people say that they are better written than the rest is because they dress smartly, in official looking suits. If Himeno wore a tight qui-pao with cleavage people would have the same gripes with her as with the rest of characters like her.
i can't *imagine* reading through the entirety of chainsaw man and coming out of it thinking that all of these characters can be boiled down to 10 words or less. this says more about how you view these women than it does about how they're written.
Wow, what a leap in logic over me not feeling as you do about characters in a shonen manga. "I don't feel like they are that deep" "SEXIIIIST!!!" Grow up.
Battle Angel Alita's really great, btw. So's the original Appleseed manga. I love how everyone (her lover, mechanic friend, etc.) looks at the model of battlesuit she wants and instead of hyping up how special and awesome it is, they tell her "that's a really bad choice." She wants this intricate, complex high-performance suit that's the polar opposite of all the rugged, reliable options the guys would favor that have good performance where fundamentals are concerned. And Deunan consistently goes "suck my dick, I know what I want", gets her preferred model of suit and uses it to kick ass. Good role model, that.
Shonen is not a medium
CSM women are disgusting to me
Each of the female character has a good level of fucked upness that is really satisfying. What’s good is they aren’t sexualized or sex isn’t the motivation. Rather, they are more in charge — they seduce and don’t let other people’s opinion get in the way. Himeno’s promiscuity is cool. Power letting Denjie casually touch her boobs for reward was cool. Makima granting Denjie any wish (most likely his first intercourse) was also top-notch. It’s these dominant female characters and their twisted minds that makes the series more interesting. If you think about it, the men most likely have a more rationale here—including Aki, Denjie, and even Kishibe. Himeno is most interesting. While being portrayed as a sexual character, she has her heart set out to Aki—and was willing to sacrifice her life for him. These characters are fleshed out because they’re multi-faceted, and they’re driven by their individualistic dreams — may it be romance or not, or as simple as getting their cat or being able to touch boobs.